In his response to me on limbo, Nicholas Senz asserts that we have “sufficient reason to believe that children who die without Baptism can be saved”. On the contrary, the 1980 CDF instruction Pastoralis Actio – which the Catechism cites on this point – plainly teaches: “The Church has thus shown by her teaching and practice that she knows no other way apart from Baptism for ensuring children's entry into eternal happiness.”
Now, we may have particular reasons for hoping that some sub-group of infants who die without baptism might be saved. But it is straightforwardly inadmissible to claim that no one is punished for original sin only. For, towering above the low-level and even non-magisterial remarks that speak of possible exceptions to the necessity of water baptism in infants, stand two solemn definitions of the ecumenical council of Florence.
